


Continuing Education

by keysmash



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: 14valentines, Female Character of Color, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-13
Updated: 2010-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-07 05:22:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keysmash/pseuds/keysmash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassie took a lot of heat, her last semester, once she decided to go home and take the job in Cape Girardeau.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Continuing Education

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for 113. Written for 14valentines.

Cassie took a lot of heat, her last semester, once she decided to go home and take the job in Cape Girardeau. Her advisor offered to get her meetings with people she knew at graduate programs, who'd be willing to speed her application along even though she was way past the deadlines for admission that fall. The professor for her senior capstone class, who'd gotten her interviews with big papers in big cities across the country, stared at her for a long moment after Cassie told her, before shrugging and getting class started. Cassie thought that would be all of it from him until her final project brought her grade from an A+ down to an A-, just in time for grades to be reported. Her roommates griped about it for various reasons — she was throwing away her chance to get into the industry, she was going to go home and never leave, didn't she want something better than that — as if it were any business of theirs.

She got a few sarcastic remarks on her Wall, mixed in with the congratulations, when she posted her plans on Facebook. Cassie understood it, sort of — she didn't think moving back home after college to live in your old bedroom and save up some money was anyone's ideal way to spend their 20s. It'd be nice if everyone stopped rubbing it in, but she wasn't changing her mind because of them, so she packed her stuff anyway.

Moving was always the same — finding stuff she'd lost, and stuff she didn't know why she'd kept, and stuff she didn't even remember being important. The bottom drawer of her bedside table held a whole jumble of papers, some from class and some with phone numbers scribbled upon them, and in the end, she swept it all into a shoebox and moved it anyway. Eventually, she'd go through and sort out what was important, and what wasn't.

Her parents were excited enough to make up for anyone else. Cassie came home to a graduation party, and a trip to the paint store to pick out a new color for her room, and a new business-casual wardrobe. Her mom made an obvious effort to stay out of Cassie's business, and the first time they stayed up to the early morning on the couch, curled around the huge, clunky mugs that were never for company, Cassie decided everyone else could go fuck themselves. She cleaned up her friends the next time she got on Facebook, and when she started up work, two weeks after she came home, it was hard to remember that this wasn't her very first choice.

She thought, actually, that coming home had been the best choice she could have made. She already knew her way around town, and she usually didn't have to try all that hard to earn the trust of people who'd seen her learn to walk. There'd be people who didn't like her wherever she went, and here, to the local assholes, she was at least a familiar nosy report. Cassie figured she could get her feet under her easier here than anywhere else, as a kid fresh out of school, and if she wanted to move on, she'd have a good starting point behind her.


End file.
